•• Backup Your things if you care about them. As a computer owner this is all on you •••

1) (For mechanical hard drives) Check to see if your hard drive is failing. You will need to use the Console application located in your Utilities folder. You will need to check your kernel.log file to see if you have any disk0 I/O errors. This is how your computer indicates a hard drive failure.

2) If your drive does not appear to be failing, then you should check to see if there is anything that is using up your resources. Use Activity Monitor (from Utilities folder) and view all processes by their CPU usage. If nothing looks out of place (i.e. *process x* is using over 80% of my CPU...), then move on to the next step.

3) Verify that your file system isn't malformed. For this you will use Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. In the first aid tab, choose Verify Volume. DO NOT RUN REPAIR PERMISSIONS. They don't do anything important. WAIST OF TIME. People who think that they are important to repair (often) obviously don't know anything about how the system works. Your file system is way more important.

Essentailly you hold down the 'option' key when you are looking at the Finder's Go menu drop down list.

• Open the Library folder (This is the user account library folder. NOT the root level library folder)

4.1) Open the Cache folder. Delete everything in this Cache folder and then log out. You don't have to empty your trash. Just delete it (command delete, see http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343)

5) If None of this has worked you could try reinstalling the OS, however you might have also missed a more subtle issue that was in your log files. This might include graphics card failures or other components that are failing. A reinstall (without restoring from a backup, however restoring your user account only is a second best) is a great way to rule out Software VS Hardware.

Thanks, Missed_call, i've just found that my disc needed repair and did it. Now, let's see if it gets slow again.

In time, it's a MacBookPro running everithing at last level. It's used to get a little solw whenever a Microsoft Office is running and that's why I'm using Mail instead Outlook. but recently (2 weeks) it started to slow sometimes and crash windows. It returned to normal after a re-boot (a shame for a MAC!!). thanks again, Eduardo

Any disk I/O errors (except a single very rare case) indicates a failing hard drive. The hard drive will need to be replaced. No software fixes here.

••••• IF there are no disk I/O errors then continue to this section •••••

For file corruption:

• File corruption can be caused by failing RAM and turing off the computer without properly shutting it down. If you have to forcefully reboot your computer then you are increasing the odds of this type of corruption - which leads to having to force reboot your computer...

AHT (apple hardware test) instructions do not mention the looping mode. The test will run and if it finds a problem it will put a RED error code on the screen. Write this error code down. However the test can only identify problems that it is able to experience during the test. It just isn't possible to find problems that happen intermittently with such a short test. Looping allows the test to run again if no trouble is found. This increases your odds of finding intermittent issues. It's like betting on multiple positions of a roulette wheel.

---------> Enable Looping: At your test screen hit 'control L'. (control like a windows shortcut, not the apple command key). You will see "looping enabled" appear. Hit start and go to bed. Check it in the morning.

• File corruption can also be from a bad hard drive although this is less common. If you are under warranty I would call in just to get the issue recorded. They will waste your time with resetting nvram and the other stuff which does not apply to your issues, BUT they can record the issue into your case history. When you make it to a genius bar (at an actual Apple owned store - not your local apple authorized dealer), they can check your history and make an better diagnosis from those notes.

Please do describe the specifics of what you are seeing (corrupted file system, freezing, etc). The symptoms are important.

AASP(apple authorized service providers) - Don't have the genius bar. Apple authorized resellers are not owned by the Apple corporation but they tend to be very skilled. They often have very good quality work because they have to get it right the first time. However they do charge for their time and service.

I've had them install operating systems for me at the bar and all they wanted was for me to keep an eye on it. The lady told me that as long as she is able to work with the next person in line then it would be ok.

I doubt it's a 10.8 thing. I've personally dealt with hundreds of installs of 10.8 and I've never seen this behavior before. Corrupted file systems are somewhat common to Apple's HFS+ system. Sort of the Achilles' heel of the platform. We woud have been past this if Apple actually implemented zfs or another file system, but that's for anotehr time I guess.

The Extended Attributes on the files could be from mail updating its files. Once those changes are saved to the file system they should be permenant until changed, given that it is written to the drive. So my only thoughts would be that mail is writting attributes and the changes are not being applied correctly.

• Still trying to isolate hardware vs software. We know that the corrupted file system is a symptom but it should not be corrupting that soon.

2) Mail application - The mail application is inherriting a problem from the user mail folder and this is causing it to not flushing files to the filesystem correctly

3) Other hardware - bad RAM (unlikely but still possible, however I would expect more random behavior), possibly something else. Run the hardware test for 4 loops and see if anything comes of it.

Triage Mail issue first:

• Turn on the Guest user in your System Preferences and configure the Mail program exactly the same way yours is. See if you can recreate the behavior in that account. This should only take 5-10 mins to setup. The rest is downloading the mail contents.

Last thing if it is not hardware and the software continues to be wonky --> At some point you might want to reinstall the OS but you'll need to backup first. I would perform and erase and install. After that manually add back the user and then reinstall the apps.

Hi, missed_call, I'll do that, I mean the Mail issue triage. I personally believe that is a mail issue inherited from Outlook.

(While I used Outlook I had a problem with the daemon files and had to rebuilt the identity and it was when the Newton Disc (the colored disc) problems got worse and worse. When moved back to MAIL, I lost a lot of e-mail files and in fact Mail has never operated accordingly, presenting many issues).

I'll go this way and find an external way to back up (this is my only MAC and I live on a small city whereI doubt I'll find a Time Capsule to buy at once.

It's true: when logged on through the Guest User - a totally clean user never used before - I could open and use MAIL and after some e-mails, I tried to verify the HD and it returned GREEN.

So it seems related to MAIL capability to adequately write the files in my regular user.

Wich is the next step? Is it possible to uninstal and reinstal MAIL only or the data base is definitely corrupted?

in this case, I guess the procedure starts backing everything up on an external HD through Time Machine. And then what? I'm not used to such procedures like manually ad the user, will I need to set everything up in my user again? Is it needed a system disc or else to run the erasing? Is it safe? Is there a detailed informaiton so I can follow? The new installation will be completely from internet?

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